I quit striving for “Inbox Zero” - Top email management strategies for a perfectly imperfect inbox
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I consider myself a pretty organized person. It’s extremely rare that I miss a deadline or forget to do something important, if ever. I can tell you where just about anything is in my house at any given time, or at least the general area.
But I’m not perfect. And my email inbox is a testament to that. As of this minute I have exactly 4,901 emails in my inbox - 3,690 of which are unread. So why on earth would I feel qualified to share tips on email management?
Because if my hunch is right, most of your inboxes probably look like mine.
And it’s not our fault. Literally billions of emails are sent every day, and almost anywhere we go online we’re required to provide our email address. If we’re not constantly vigilant, it’s inevitable that our inboxes will be soon be overflowing.
But does that really provide any consolation? I try so hard to stay on top of things, so why is my inbox still out of control? Why can’t I seem to hit “inbox zero” and stay there? Isn’t that the goal? Does this make me a failure?
Well friends, I’m here today to tell you, no. You’re not a failure. It’s ok. You have permission to quit striving for “inbox zero” if you want to.
“You have permission to quit striving for ‘inbox zero’ if you want to.”
Instead, I’m here to give you the top three email management strategies to maintain a perfectly imperfect inbox. As long as you follow these steps you can quit stressing about the numbers and rest easy knowing that no matter how crazy your inbox may seem, everything is taken care of.
1. Create an action folder and quit having to stay on top of every single email
If you do nothing else on this list, do this one thing! When your inbox is flooded with emails it can be easy to miss the important things. So it’s crucial to keep a separate folder for those emails that are truly important and require some sort of reply or action.
This may be a bill, some subscription notice you’ve been meaning to cancel and keep forgetting, an important message from a friend or family member…you get the idea.
Then plan a time once a week or so (whatever makes sense for you) to check your action folder and handle just those emails – no need to wade through the rest of the inbox!
Bonus tip!
Do not, I repeat, do not check your email or click on that email notification unless you have time to take immediate action on it.
And by immediate action I mean skimming and moving important emails to your “action” folder. You don’t have to fully answer or handle them right away, but at minimum you need to pull them out of the inbox until you can handle them.
2. Befriend the archive and quit worrying about being indecisive
These days the space we have in our inboxes is huge! We could probably go years without deleting a single message before we come close to running out of space. So quit worrying about whether or not it’s safe to delete an email. If you’re on the fence, just archive it and move on!
And don’t worry about filing it away in some special folder, just the general archive is fine. When was the last time you actually went through your folders anyway? If you ever really need to go back and find something chances are you’ll just search for it.
Bonus tip!
If you do know right away that you want to save a message, store that away in a special “Save” folder. This could be important legal information or precious photos from a friend or family member. By moving these to a separate folder if you ever do happen to start running out of space and need to start purging your archive you’ll know not to touch those.
3. Filter out promotions and quit being ashamed of being a coupon junkie
The worst offenders in my inbox are likely those promotional emails from places that regularly send me coupons. (Redbox or Bed, Bath, and Beyond, anyone?) I say these are the worst because I tend to get a ton of them, and I don’t want to unsubscribe them because I do want those savings.
And that’s ok! Stay subscribed! But, so they don’t overwhelm your inbox make a filter based on the email address that sends the coupons you want. Then, have those emails skip the inbox and automatically route to their own folder. Mine is simply labeled “Coupons”.
This helps slim down the incoming messages that you actively see every day without sacrificing those savings. Then, when you’re ready to go shopping you can check your “Coupons” folder to see the most recent deals.
And there you have it folks! If you stick to these tips not only will you stay on top of your emails, but you can finally take “clean up email inbox” off of your to-do list for good. How many of us actually get around to that one anyway?
I mean, sure, maybe one day I’ll get there again, but let’s quit stressing about it and put our time and energy toward other things that actually matter in the meantime.
